The trader went away with a queer warmth in his heart he had not known for many a day.  The facts did not justify this elation, this swift exhilaration of blood, but to one who has starved for long any food is grateful.

Jessie flew back into the house.  She had a busy two hours before her.  “Mother, Mr. Morse is coming to dinner.  What’s in the house?”

“Fergus brought a black-tail in yesterday.”

“Good.  I know what I’ll have.  But first off, I want a bath.  Lots of hot water, and all foamy with soap.  I’ve got to hurry.  You can peel the potatoes if you like.  And fix some of those young onions.  They’re nice.  And Mother—­I’ll let you make the biscuits.  That’s all.  I’ll do the rest.”

The girl touched a match to the fire that was set in her room.  She brought a tin tub and hot water and towels.  Slim and naked she stood before the roaring logs and reveled in her bath.  The sense of cleanliness was a luxury delicious.  When she had dressed herself from the soles of her feet up in clean clothes, she felt a new and self-respecting woman.

She did not pay much attention to the psychology of dress, but she knew that when she had on the pretty plaid that had come from Fort Benton, and when her heavy black hair was done up just right, she had twice the sex confidence she felt in old togs.  Jessie would have denied indignantly that she was a coquette.  None the less she was intent on conquest.  She wanted this quiet, self-contained American to like her.

The look she had seen in his red-brown eyes at times tantalized her.  She could not read it.  That some current of feeling about her raced deep in him she divined, but she did not know what it was.  He had a way of letting his steady gaze rest on her disturbingly.  What was he thinking?  Did he despise her?  Was he, away down out of sight, the kind of man toward women that West and Whaley were?  She wouldn’t believe it.  He had never taken an Indian woman to live with him.  There was not even a rumor that he had ever taken an interest in any Cree girl.  Of course she did not like him—­not the way she did Win Beresford or even Onistah—­but she was glad he held himself aloof.  It would have greatly disappointed her to learn of any sordid intrigue involving him.

Jessie rolled up her sleeves and put on a big apron.  She saw that the onions and the potatoes were started and the venison ready for broiling.  From a chest of drawers she brought one of the new white linen tablecloths of which she was inordinately proud.  She would not trust any one but herself to set the table.  Morse had come from a good family.  He knew about such things.  She was not going to let him go away thinking Angus McRae’s family were barbarians, even though his wife was a Cree and his children of the half-blood.

On the table she put a glass dish of wild-strawberry jam.  In the summer she had picked the fruit herself, just as she had gathered the saskatoon berries sprinkled through the pemmican she was going to use for the rubaboo.